


Thence A New Concoction Take

by Tam_Cranver



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: F/M, Magic masturbation, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 10:22:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20691932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tam_Cranver/pseuds/Tam_Cranver
Summary: Newt and Anathema have a picnic and dabble in sex magic.





	Thence A New Concoction Take

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Tam_Cranver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tam_Cranver/pseuds/Tam_Cranver) in the [iibb2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/iibb2019) collection. 

> I do not actually know anything about sex magic--my apologies to any readers more knowledgeable on the subject. The title comes from "The Ecstasy" by John Donne, which also features lovers having some jaunty outdoor soul-mingling.

In the end, Anathema probably wouldn’t have done anything if it hadn’t been for Newt’s curiosity.

“Can I ask you something?” he’d asked one morning in bed. The morning sun shone pale gold and hazy through the thin curtains. It softened his features as she turned her face against the pillow to look at him. Neither of them had anywhere to be, and the bedroom was just cool enough that the covers felt deliciously warm. Anathema had every intention of staying there all day. 

She stretched and smiled at Newt. “You just did.” Maybe, she thought, his corniness was rubbing off on her.

He half-chuckled and ran his hand along her bare shoulder. His hand was warm and smooth, and something in Anathema shivered at the contact. She could see it register in Newt’s eyes, even without her glasses. “You’re….” he started, but whatever it was, he couldn’t find the words for it and leaned in to kiss her. 

After that, they were distracted for a bit.

When it finally seemed to both of them that it would be better to lie back and let the sweat dry from their skin than it would be to kiss the side of each other’s necks or lazily stroke between each other’s thighs, Anathema remembered. “What did you want to ask me?”

Newt’s mouth curled down thoughtfully. “It’s about magic.”

Newt had had a lot of questions about magic in the past few months. To his joy, he’d discovered that the delicate art of mapping ley lines and drawing runes for magical spells used some of the same skills as computer programming without the inevitable crashes. In the aftermath of the almost-apocalypse, Anathema had turned her attention and her powers to saving the world in other ways--drawing on the powers of the earth to clean the water in impoverished communities, laying minor but irritating curses on corrupt politicians, drawing torn plastic fishing nets out of the oceans so they couldn’t hurt any more sea turtles--and Newt had happily joined her in developing new spells to suit her purposes. It wasn’t as if either of them needed to get a job, not with the kind of money Anathema could draw from her family’s accounts. She’d had a batch of business cards made up for Newt that said “Assistant Occultist,” as a kind of joke, but Newt had actually loved them and handed them out whenever he saw an opportunity for it.

“What about magic?” she asked, amused. It was an awfully vague question, given how many spells Newt had helped her draw up lately.

“Well.” Newt looked down, always a sure sign that he was embarrassed about what he was going to ask. “When I’d first joined the Witchfinder Army….”

Anathema wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. “Yes?”

“Sergeant Shadwell talked a lot about, oh, seductive sorceresses, you know? All this sort of...erotic, tempting, sex magic that witches were doing.”

“Is there a question in there somewhere?” Anathema was no longer amused. She’d been forced to leave a lot of internet forums and occult conferences in her day because of gross guys who’d done a lot of reading about sex magic and not a lot of reading about feminism.

Newt flushed. “Well. Is it real? I mean, is that a real thing?”

Anathema sighed. “Sex magic? Sure.”

“Oh.” Newt gave her a sheepish smile and rolled onto his back. “Right. Great. Good to know. Thanks.”

Despite herself, Anathema could feel her irritation start to subside. Newt wasn’t gross, in her experience--he was curious. He was curious about witchcraft, curious about America, curious about her childhood, and yes, curious about sex. She’d actually benefited a lot from his desire to try new things--his growing proficiency at cunnilingus, his excitement at fucking her with a vibrator, his shy willingness and surprised pleasure when she got out her strap-on….She sat up and tapped on his forehead. “Hey,” she said, softer than before. “Why’d you want to know?”

It wasn’t easy to shrug when you were lying down, but Newt managed it. “Dunno,” he said. “I always thought it was nonsense when Sergeant Shadwell talked about it--you know what he’s like--but I just thought. Well, I like sex. And I like magic. So if sex magic’s a real thing, I thought I might like it.” He tilted his head back on the pillow to meet her eyes, and her hand slipped naturally into his hair. She gently tugged, and he blinked, smiling at her as if in a daze.

Then his smile fell, and he said, “I wouldn’t want to do it if it’s, you know. Black magic, and all that.”

“I mean, it’s like anything else,” said Anathema, thinking about it. “It _can _be bad. But it doesn’t have to be. It depends on the person and what they’re using it for. What do you want to do with it?”

“Do you have to do anything with it?” asked Newt with a frown. “I thought it was just. Magical sex, maybe?”

“Oh, what, the sex we’ve been having isn’t magical enough for you?” Anathema couldn’t keep up her mock stern voice past the end of the sentence, and broke into a laugh.

Newt laughed, too. “Sorry, no, yeah, it’s fantastic. You’re fantastic.” He reached over to grab the hand that wasn’t in his hair and kissed it, pressing his lips above her knuckles and stroking her wrist with his thumb, gentle, affectionate.

She smiled down at him. “Seriously, though, plenty of sex magic pretty much is just magical sex. If you want, I can set something up.”

“Can you?” asked Newt delightedly. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Anathema’s experiences with sex magic were pretty much limited to one time with a college roommate whose idea of witchcraft was pretty woo-woo bullshit but who had enough natural magic ability to make for a _really _fun night. She tried to remember what she and Rachelle had done, and then immediately discarded it. Newt was special. This called for something special. “Let me think about it.”

“Thinking about it” ended up involving a little meditative masturbation. She sent Newt to Oxford to get some supplies--as much as she loved him, this kind of thing required a little privacy. At least until she knew what she was doing.

Anathema had always felt most comfortable tapping into magical energies sexually when she was taking a bath, so she burned a couple of sweet-scented candles, threw in a bath bomb with rose and lavender oils, and lowered herself into the steaming water. 

She ran a finger along her inner folds, moving up to stroke her clit lightly. Letting the sparks of arousal flare and disperse, she focused on the warm, glowing essence within her, the source of her aura, her magical spirit. Its borders shimmered within her skin, pulsing with pleasure as she increased the pressure just enough to stop tickling and start sending bright signals in every direction. The water felt like heated silk against her skin, and she felt her nipples tighten.

Dipping deeper into herself, she squeezed her thighs together and rubbed herself against her arm, pulling that magical essence to the surface as she tried to clear her mind of everything but Newt and the sensations as they followed one after another. There was no question to ask, no answer to seek--whatever came to her this way would have to come in its own way and its own time.

She’d chosen to rent Jasmine Cottage for a number of reasons: mostly, because it was near the center of where all the prophecies had said the apocalypse would happen, and because it was available, but also because it lay near the convergence point of several ley lines and thus was a place of great natural power. She felt that power answering her inner call, fizzing through her blood with an almost playful energy, racing toward her center.

_Newt_, she thought, Newt rubbing a gentle but determined finger around her clit while he kissed her, Newt smiling in wonder as he fucked her, Newt frowning in concentration over a spell, Newt laughing at one of his own stupid puns, Newt peering at her through his glasses over the morning newspaper like an old man, Newt telling her she was wonderful and was more than enough without Agnes’s prophecies, Newt, Newt, _Newt_…

The water had filled with energy that filtered through her fingertips and radiated from the nexus of her legs, and as if it had a mind of its own, it pushed its way into her, more yielding than a cock but hot and swelling and sweet as it pressed against her just where it felt the best. Through it she felt a line of power connecting her to the earth underneath her floor, the groundwater running beneath and filtering into the river, the cosmic forces of _should be _and _will be_ and _mine_ that had gathered around Tadfield with Adam’s arrival and hadn’t yet dissipated. The strength of it, the goodness of it, was almost too much to bear, and as she came she imagined herself flying apart into a million tiny pieces, floating up to the sky to join the stars in their long, burning watch.

Somebody screamed. It was her.

As she came down from wherever it was her orgasm had sent her, her breath slowing as the water cooled, she thought, _I have an idea_. She pulled herself out of the bath, put on her bathrobe, and went into the den where she’d ended up putting all of her magic books. She had some research to do.

The next weekend, when Adam and the rest of his friends had somehow finagled the Youngs into taking them to the London Zoo and so wouldn’t be dropping by Jasmine Cottage unexpectedly, and when Anathema’s mom was on a Mediterranean cruise without cell phone reception, Anathema and Newt packed a picnic lunch and went to the Garden.

The Garden was only really a garden in the loosest sense. It was really a deforested plot of land not far from the air base that, back when gasoline had been leaded and waste disposal laws had been a lot more lax, had wound up being a dumping ground for the military’s waste. Now that Tadfield was Anathema’s home, that shit wouldn’t stand. With a lot of help from Newt and the townspeople (even Mr. Tyler, who still thought Anathema was cooking meth or something out in the cottage), they’d managed to replant hundreds of trees and native plants, plus bee-attracting flowers and duckweed for the pond, to decontaminate the soil.

They’d also gotten a little help from Aziraphale and Crowley. Whatever else the two of them were--and Anathema got the distinct sense that they’d been a lot of things over the years, some of them good for humanity and some of them decidedly not--they were absolutely on the same page as Anathema when it came to keeping humans from destroying the earth. And both of them were fond of gardens. The Garden wasn’t Eden, but with angelic blessings protecting it from fire, pests, and humans, and demonic energy feeding the plants, Anathema liked to think it was pretty unique as far as human-made green spaces went.

It was late September but, global warming and Adam’s waning powers being what they were, the sun still shone warmly on the leaves and water, and the breeze rustling the thistles and speedwell was cool, rather than chilling.

Newt laid out the blanket, and they sat down to eat their sandwiches and turnovers.

“So,” Newt said, darting a glance at Anathema as he unwrapped his sandwich. “How does this work?”

Anathema swallowed her lemonade and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. It was awfully warm for the long-sleeved dress she was wearing. She was looking forward to taking it off. “Well. The thing about sex that makes it so powerful is that it’s one of the generative forces that keeps the world connected and moving forward.”

Newt made a face as he thought through that. “Right, yeah, okay. Like reproduction, the constant regeneration of the seasons, all that. _Natura creatrix_.” At Anathema’s look, he said, “I took Latin in school, all right? I do actually know some things.”

“Never said you didn’t,” said Anathema lightly, and she took a bite of her sandwich. After she was done with it, she said, “The point I was trying to make is, sex is a connecting force, okay? It connects us to each other and it connects us to nature, if we channel the energies right. So what I was thinking today is that we’d really heighten that feeling of connection, using our energies to tap into the forces in the Garden.” 

“Okay,” said Newt slowly. “And...what? I mean, what exactly would that do?”

Here Anathema hesitated. This was the part she wasn’t exactly sure how to explain. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could make it work, either. “Newt,” she said, “do you trust me?”

“Of course.” He didn’t even hesitate, and Anathema felt her own hesitation melt in the face of his earnest affection and trust.

“Good,” she said. “That’ll make this easier.” She drew him forward into a kiss, holding his face in her hands. He put his sandwich down uneaten and leaned into her, following her lead. There was nothing in the world she wanted to do less than pull away from him then, but somehow she managed to do it.

“Lunch first,” she managed to get out. “We’ll need the energy.”

After they finally managed to make it through their sandwiches, Anathema got out the diagrams she’d drawn. “Okay,” she said. “Obviously we don’t want to do this with candles or chalk or anything non-biodegradable, so my plan was, we’d draw the circle in water and just weigh down paper copies of the runes with rocks.”

“Does that work?” asked Newt. “Drawing it with water, I mean? Doesn’t seem like you’d be able to make a good circle if you can’t even see it.”

“Oh, you’ll see it,” said Anathema with a smile. “Help me with the runes.”

While Newt arranged the runes to Anathema’s liking, she pulled out a thermos of water she’d filled earlier that morning. Crowley had given it to her the last time she’d gone down to London. It was an ordinary-looking thermos in a sedate plaid pattern, but it radiated both celestial and occult power. “Don’t need it anymore,” he’d told her, and Aziraphale had looked downright eager for it, and her, to be out of Crowley’s flat, so she’d taken it with thanks.

The water inside was only normal tap water, but just being in the thermos had made it hum with power, and Anathema held it in her hands and felt it warm. Underneath her feet, plants were pushing their way up through the soil, and a line leading from the oldest tree in the county to a rock that had once been part of a burial mound hummed in curiosity. She closed her eyes and felt that hum in her bones, the sun warm on her skin, and she thought about the moment the previous morning when she had tugged on Newt’s hair as he worked a third finger into her and both of them had come within a minute of each other. Energy flowed through her; though it was probably her imagination, she thought she could feel all the molecules in the water vibrate with excitement.

She undid the top button on her dress and started working her way down.

Newt seemed to catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, turned back to his runes, then did a literal double take and stared at her. “The--what--”

“We could always have sex with our clothes on if you want,” she said, working the dress down over her hips. “But honestly I was getting kind of hot. It’s not like anyone’s going to see us, anyway.”

“I--well--I suppose being naked will be the least of our concerns if someone comes on us having magic sex in a field.” And with that, he started to unbutton his shirt. Anathema paused her hands for a moment to watch him. Watching Newt get undressed was always a treat for her, not so much because he was nice to look at (though he was--she loved every freckle and hair on his body), but because it always seemed so freeing to him, like there was something adventuresome and bold that his clothes kept hidden and bound away that only came out when the clothes came off.

But time was wasting. She let her dress puddle around her feet and picked up the thermos from where she’d carefully set it in the grass.

Newt had done a fine job of arranging the runes to as best to act as conduits for the lines of power running through earth, water, air, and sunlight. Carefully, feeling the wakening warmth in the earth on her bare feet, she slowly poured out the water in a circle that bound the runes together. The water sparkled with more than natural brilliance as it poured evenly onto the grass, and as she breathed out slowly, doing her best not to shake or jar the thermos, she heard Newt gasp.

“It’s--you’re absolutely right, I can see it.”

It might not have looked too terribly strange to a passerby--just sunlight glinting on dew. But the passerby would then have wondered how dew had come to form such a smooth and perfect circle. And then he might have asked himself just how it was that the sunlight sparkling from the grass in this one spot happened to be so much brighter than any of the light reflecting from the ground anywhere else in the field. And then he probably would have wondered what that hum, like the low drone of a very large bee or a very strange hurdy-gurdy, was.

Months ago, Newt would probably have been that passerby, and would probably have been able to come up with a very rational and very incorrect explanation. But now, as Anathema straightened and looked him in the face, he blinked at her in wonder and not a little concern. “You’re sure this is all right?” he asked. “We’re not going to...offend anything?”

She shook her head, pulling her hair loose as she did. God, that felt good. “We’re fine,” she said. “This kind of magic….” She paused. Rachelle, and the occasional coven she’d discussed this with back in the day, either didn’t need explanations or _thought _they didn’t need explanations, even if their ideas were complete bullshit. But Newt was her partner in magic in a way no one had ever been before; he deserved an explanation that made sense. “It’s obviously a problem if you’re violating someone’s boundaries. Or you’re exploiting your partner’s spirit or the local powers to strengthen your own magic. But that’s not what we’re doing here. We’re just…we’re joining ourselves into something that’s already happening. _Natura creatrix_.”

“Right.” He gazed at the circle again, smiling slowly. “I like that. Sort of a, um, I don’t know, finding a good place for ourselves in the grand scheme of things?”

She smiled at him. “That’s a good way of putting it. Let me just…” Heading back over to Newt’s satchel, she deposited her hair pins so she didn’t lose track of them later and pulled the bottle of wine she’d mulled at home out. Stirring in the honey and herbs she’d brought, she murmured a chant. She hadn’t gotten this particular chant from a book. She’d gotten it from her grandmother in a very embarrassing conversation that she was very glad to have had now.

Wine wasn’t nearly so showy as water when it came to showing its enchantments, but Anathema thought it would work. And if it didn’t, it would still be tasty.

She stepped back over to Newt. “Okay,” she said. “Last step. We both drink this.”

“And then?”

“And then we do whatever we want.” She grinned, letting a couple of daydreams blossom into full-fledged fantasies. “I have a couple of ideas.”

Newt carefully took the wine from her and sipped a long gulp before passing it back. She sipped it slowly, feeling the sun that had warmed the fruit and the joy of the flowers that had made the honey and the soil that had fed the herbs.

The spell had worked. She pulled Newt down to kiss him deeply. He kissed back with enthusiasm, his mouth warm and slick and tasting of wine and honey.

“This is nice,” he murmured into her mouth. His breath mingled with hers, and she could feel a sort of tingling in her fingers, a blurring in her vision.

“It’s gonna get nicer in a minute,” she said, pulling back. “You ever eaten a woman out while she’s standing up?” It was a rhetorical question; she knew he hadn’t.

His eyes widened, and he dropped to his knees almost immediately; Anathema could feel the slight pain in his knees. He’d probably have bruises later, but that was all right. She’d take care of him. “Should I….” he started, gazing up at her with the adoring curiosity that turned her on every time she saw it, his blue eyes wide and focused wholly on her.

She buried her fingers in his hair on either side of his head, holding him firmly between her hands and feeling a sense of power swell in her. It was a relatively new feeling, this sense that her magic was hers, that she and not her family’s destiny was in control of it, and she relished the feeling, digging her bare toes into the warm soil just for the joy of it. Her cheer resonated in the air, which caressed her with its own cool playfulness. “You know what I like, honey,” she said, low. “Go for it.”

His mouth went to work at once, his clever tongue drawing a hot line across her pussy and surrounding her clit with just enough pressure, a promise of things to come rather than a teasing glance. As a jolt of pleasure rocked her like a lighting bolt, Newt jerked back in shock.

“What—”

“I told you, Newt,” Anathema said to him. “It’s all about connection.” As the shock of ecstasy faded, she could feel her edges blurring further—not bringing her out of her body, but letting her feel his--the pressure on his knees--his rising arousal, more forceful than her own, like something pressing him from within—the way he saw her, an unpredictable force of beauty and wonder that had come into his life to change it forever, a woman whose uncertainty in running her own life made him angry and protective on her behalf, whose happiness he treasured and whose lead he was happy to follow.

She felt herself flush with embarrassment and happiness, and let her own feelings for him—affection, amusement, arousal, a fierce attachment she had never felt before—radiate outward. It was harder than she’d thought it would be. Apparently, even after a lifetime knowing she would one day know him (even if she hadn’t quite known how), there was still some sort of mental wall barricading the deepest parts of her from him. But no more. The magic of the circle rose around them in a golden web binding them to each other and to everything around them, but within her heart, she loosened something that had been tight and knotted within her for a very long time.

His face shone like the sun. “Oh,” he said. “You—that’s what you meant, by connection.”

“That’s _part _of what I meant. If you want to find out the rest, we have to keep going.”

“Right-o, sorry about that, lost my train of thought.” The words were the kind of thing he’d say if he got distracted by a particularly interesting note in a spell book or a technical glitch that he was _sure _he could fix, but his voice was the breathless murmur of the bedroom. As he buried his face once more between her legs, Anathema shuddered at the feeling of his breath, the wet sound of his tongue teasing once more along her folds. 

Even as the heat and the pressure against her clit sent a wave of pleasure through her, making the hair on her arms stand up, she could taste herself on his tongue, feel the way her curly hair rubbed roughly but gently against his cheeks, see her own face and blue sky behind her as he looked up at her. Somewhere, a dying forget-me-not released the last of its seeds with a happy sigh; a deer in early heat felt a powerful yearning that he didn’t understand, an urge to leap and run and find a doe. The September air was full and heavy with sex—not the fresh, light sex of spring, but an older, riper, heavier thing that filled Anathema like golden honey, sinking into itself layer upon layer. Stretching her limits to bursting with that ancient force that held atoms together and brought lovers like planets into each others' orbits.

Unable to bear any more, she pulled at Newt’s hair. “It’s so good!” she got out, hearing herself through two sets of ears. “Fuck! God, you’re so good!” His shy pride at the praise pushed her over the edge, and she came in a bright burst of light against her eyelids, and for one moment, she and Newt and the sky and the earth were all one glowing sun, one throbbing heartbeat.

When the orgasm faded enough for her to be aware of herself again, she saw that Newt had sprawled at her feet, staring up at her with dazed satisfaction. Her juices shone on his face--he was usually keen to wipe them away quickly, but at the moment, he didn’t have a care in the world. “Didn’t know that’s what it felt like for you,” he said, breathless. “Is it always like that?”

“I’m not usually casting a spell that connects our spirits to the sexual essences of the English countryside, so, no,” said Anathema, and Newt laughed. When he’d caught his breath, she added, “But it is good. It’s usually good with you.”

He beamed, and she could feel his pleased pride. “It’s good for me, too. Could you feel….”

“I could feel everything,” she said.

“Oh!” Newt let out a heavy breath. “Can you imagine…can you imagine what it’ll feel like if we…you know….?”

“If we fuck, you mean?” She grinned at him and strode over until she was standing astraddle his body. “I was hoping you’d be up for that next. I _really _want you to feel me fucking you with your own dick.”

“Well. And I—” She could feel when his weak attempts to think of a comeback died. “Oh, bugger it,” he said. “Let’s do that.”

“Let’s,” she said.

Magic couldn’t produce lube out of nowhere, but it could make for lube that heightened arousal and pleasure and smelled good to boot, so Anathema made herself step off from over Newt to grab the oil she'd prepared out of the bag. Her hands slick, she went back to kneel between his legs and wrap her fingers around his cock.

He had already been aroused from eating her out, but the feeling of her hand and the smooth slick glide of the oil made his dick jump in her hands, straining red. She could feel the strain in him, too, feel as he ground his pelvis around in an effort either to come or to keep himself from coming—even he wasn’t sure which.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “Stay hard for me, baby. You know it’ll be worth it.”

Swallowing with difficulty, he nodded, his eyes squeezed tight.

She couldn’t make it too easy on him, though—she gently squeezed him in the soft way he liked best, spreading the slick with her fingertips. Each fingertip drew a line of sweet agony, each hint of pressure to his balls made his body come alive with sensation, with the yearning to let go. She felt his longing in the pit of her stomach, her clit sending sympathetic echoes of his pained pleasure resonating through her limbs and mind.

It seemed she’d made things hard on herself, as well.

“All right,” she said, low. “I’m going to fuck you now.” And slowly, inch by inch, she lowered herself onto him.

Newt’s fumblings their first time together hadn’t been able to overshadow the fact that he was big, just on the edge of being uncomfortable as she stretched herself around him. He always made her feel _full. _But it took some getting used to. Below her, he winced—his joy at _finally _being inside her and the edges of her pain blurring his desperation into something murkier.

She wanted his mind and his ecstasy clear, and she sent a wave of her own contentment through their bond as she bent her knees a little to stroke his face. “Give it a minute,” she said. “Just give it a minute.”

The pain never distracted for long—even as it faded, its edges gave her desire a new sharpness, a new hunger. They both sighed as she shifted and he hit a spot inside her that sent a new sort of sensation shivering from her clit to her fingertips.

Anathema loved her strap-on, loved watching it disappear into Newt, loved the feel of it as it rubbed against her, loved the sense of power that little bit of distance gave her, but it hadn’t prepared her for the feeling of absolute, overwhelming sensory reverberation she felt now. Even as the feel of Newt, thick and hot and perfectly shaped, made her already sensitive pussy come alive with delight, she could feel the wet heat around her dick, the way the smooth glide made her pulse quicken and her pelvic muscles tighten. And Newt—she could feel the way each rise and fall, each stroke of him into her made his head ring with both his own pleasure and hers. Each of her gasps found its echo in him, each jolt of arousal he felt resonated throughout her. The feeling amplified as it grew between them, a harmony without sound, a duet that became a polyphony as it grew, boosted by the circle of water, humming in counterpoint to the ley line that bound them to the earth.

Not even the space of a breath passed between her orgasm and his—there was no difference between them, they shared the same skin, they were both expanding outward into mist, into dust, into light.

Anathema didn’t know how long it was until she was back in her own body. Longer than after the first orgasm, she thought. Long enough that the sun was starting to send long afternoon shadows over their circle, dulling its glow. She had grass in her hair and a lot of little scratches on her knees and the bottom of her feet that were making themselves felt now.

“So that’s sex magic, is it?” asked Newt. Through the fading connection between them, she could sense his satisfied exhaustion. It was a good thing they’d eaten lunch.

“That’s sex magic,” she confirmed, content. As the loosened power of their rune circle dissipated into the now-cooler air, she still felt the echoes of it—the thrill of two crows chasing each other in circles across the clear sky, the curiosity of a rabbit that had paused to watch them at it, the deep feeling of _rightness _in the earth that someone had done something nice with all that power people usually ignored.

Newt sat up and brushed grass off himself. “It’s funny,” he said. “When we were, you know. I mean, I felt _you_, obviously, but I also felt…” He frowned. “I don’t know. It was a bit like that feeling when you’re doing something complicated with a lot of people, and everybody’s got a different bit to do, but even though you’re terrified it’ll all go wrong, everything all lines up and goes right. If that makes sense.”

“Did you like that feeling?” asked Anathema.

“I did, yeah. It was great.” He shivered. “Getting a bit nippy now, though, and I don’t want anybody to see us out here now that the circle’s broken. D’you want to head home?”

She _was _home, she thought, in a way she had never been before. Newt, and Tadfield, and Earth—they weren’t some distant puzzle to solve, they were hers, and she was theirs, and no angels or demons would ever take them from her.

But it really was getting a little chilly for a naked picnic. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
